Astrology by Hand

A column by Robert Hand

Let’s continue where we left off last week about how we may have
modified astrology in order to make the gap between it and
science less severe.

I want to repeat that I do not dispute the merits of the
humanistic approach as a valid way of doing astrology. But I do
believe that we can say that it is a failure in making astrology
conform to the prevailing scientific paradigm. This is not a
criticism. It is simply a statement that I believe that
humanistic astrology is in the same boat with the other branches
of astrology with regard to science.

Psychological Astrology and Personality Testing

Several efforts have been made over the years to establish the
validity of psychological astrology by means of various kinds of
psychological tests or experiments. We have the Vernon Clarke
tests and various efforts to replicate them, and we have the
infamous effort to test psychological astrology by means of the
California Personality Inventory (CPI), as well as various efforts
to correlate astrological traits such as signs with psychological traits
such as introversion-extraversion, etc. Some of these have been genuinely
interesting, others have been very poorly designed. The Gauquelin research
was among the best designed. The CPI test was among the worst. But the
merits of these experiments are not important. What is important is that
any attempt to correlate astrological and psychological factors by means
of objective experimental procedures means that one is trying to establish
a correlation between astrology and something objectively real. A
psychological trait that has been measured by a psychological
test is made in some way an objective reality (assuming the
psychological tests have any merit). The astrological trait is no
longer merely speaking in the subjective language of myth and
fable.

I have no problem with this, but I do want to point out that
we are now in the same realm as trying to predict events in the
external world through astrology. Psychological traits measured
by psychological tests are objective entities, or at least have
been converted to objective models.

I think that psychological astrology is no more compatible
with the scientific paradigm than other kinds of astrology. It is
true that many of us have found it more comfortable because it
has seemed more compatible with our other modern ways of
thinking. But that doesn’t make it so.

Other Kinds of Astrology that Really Challenge Science

Quite aside from traditional astrology, which is well known
for its tendency to try to describe objective events, there are
some other quite respectable (to us at least) branches of modern
astrology that are truly a challenge to the scientific paradigm.
Many modern astrologers, for example, do not seem to find it at
all implausible for astrology to predict earthquakes. Leaving
aside the fact that the record is not good in this area, this
kind of prediction truly demands that astrology be reducible to physical
effects. And I have to admit, it doesn’t seem completely absurd that
alignments of the planets could have an effect on the
Earth’s tectonic plates. But let’s look at how we do
this. No one that I know of has attempted to predict earthquakes
using the day-by-day and minute-by-minute movements of the
planets. It is done from charts that function very much like birth charts.
The two main kinds of charts that people have used to predict earthquakes
have been eclipses and ingress charts.

Eclipse Charts as Birth Charts

If earthquakes occurred at the moment of eclipses, we would
have a potent indication that the alignment of the Sun and
Moon actually did cause them according to something that would be
amenable to science. But we believe that an eclipse can signify
an earthquake months, or even years, after the eclipse; and some
even hold that the eclipse can signify events before the
actual eclipse. I do not have a serious problem with this idea from an
astrological point of view, but effects preceding causes is a serious
“no no” in most scientific activity. (We will ignore for the
moment the fact that the theory of general relativity and some
quantum effects also may force us to rethink causation.) Texts on
eclipses also stress that the astrological signal that times an
event indicated by the eclipse may be a transit of a planet over
the position of the eclipse before or after the eclipse. Once we
get into transits of any kind, we are in the same area of
difficulty as with conventional birth charts.

Ingress charts, charts cast for the moment that the Sun enters
0 degrees Aries, Cancer, Libra or Capricorn, present exactly the same
difficulties as eclipse charts. And even worse, the astronomical
events associated with ingress charts have no clearly implied
physical effects, such as the alignments of the Sun and Moon
might have in eclipses.

Next week we will look at a kind of astrology that
really challenges science: horary.

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About Robert Hand

Robert Hand is one of the world's most famous and renowned astrologers. He takes a special interest in the philosophical dimensions of astrology and is quite dedicated to computer programming. Currently he is fully engaged for Arhat Media as an editor, translator and publisher of ancient astrological writings. Rob Hand lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

Rob is an honor graduate from Brandeis University, with honors in history, and went on for graduate work in the History of Science at Princeton. Rob began an astrology practice in 1972 and as success came, he began traveling world wide as a full time professional astrologer. In 2013, he was designated as a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) by The Catholic University of America.

As one of the largest astrology portals WWW.ASTRO.COM offers a lot of free features on the subject. With high-quality horoscope interpretations by the world's leading astrologers Liz Greene, Robert Hand and other authors, many free horoscopes and extensive information on astrology for beginners and professionals, www.astro.com is the first address for astrology on the web.